


Dragon Dust

by Cupcakemolotov



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dragons, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Caroline is a Thief, F/M, They Will Probably Argue About It, at some point, here be dragons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:28:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22554847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cupcakemolotov/pseuds/Cupcakemolotov
Summary: To save Enzo, Caroline has to steal something from a dragon. Everything is fine. Really.
Relationships: Caroline Forbes/Klaus Mikaelson
Comments: 45
Kudos: 253





	Dragon Dust

**Author's Note:**

> For Sophie. Because she is the best.

The ledge was cold and dangerously smooth beneath her bare toes, and Caroline pressed tightly against the wall behind her. Her boots bounced against her sternum, the laces tied around her neck, but she didn't dare lift a hand to hold them steady. She risked a peek down and swallowed hard as she took in the drop. If she squinted, she could _almost_ make out the patrolling guards below her as individuals and not just moving torches, the faint chink of armor bouncing across the stone walls. The sound of heavy boots echoed against the unforgiving stone of the bridged walkway above her.

She fervently wished the guards were her main concern. Blowing out a slow breath, Caroline winced as the breeze ruffled the edges of her clothing, the smell of a storm heavy in the air. She hoped the building storm continued to hold off, the sharp flashes of lightning vivid above the fog. Originally, she’d planned on using the storm to cover her tracks, but now the rain was a liability she couldn't afford. The magic that she'd used to carefully coax the razor thin ledge from the sheared stone walls around her wouldn't hold forever, and rain would turn stone into a slippery death.

Biting her lip tightly between her teeth, Caroline inched along the narrow ledge and tried not to think of falling. This wasn't her first escape out a window, this wasn't even her first creep across an impossible ledge. But having recently retired from her guild, she'd hoped to avoid dangling from unnecessary heights.

Enzo would have laughed at her, if he’d been around for it.

A faint ripple of a sound and Caroline went motionless, teeth clenched tightly together to keep them from chattering from the cold. The fog moved, and she caught the barest glimpse of wings before the patrolling beast melted back into the night. Fear was a cold knot in her stomach, and she stood unmoving in the hopes of calming her hammering pulse. If she was caught, a dragon was as likely to eat her as to question her, and she didn't have time for either.

Caroline was tempted to hate High Castle.

Yesterday, she'd thought it beautiful.

The massive stone columns reaching into the sky were breathtaking and the perfect masonry gave the gleaming towers a false appearance of delicacy. Staring at the craftsmanship, you could almost forget the stone arches of the gate were over twenty feet tall, and why. Even the main courtyard was disproportionate to anything Caroline had known in her life, the wide space of dark stone scarred heavily by claws. High Castle's walls were carved out of the mountain itself, though the highest tower reached well above the mountain's stone peaks. Everything was massive, built on lines that no human would ever dream of creating.

It had stirred something in her chest as she stared at the dragon's display of power. Terror? Fascination? Awe? Some mix of all three? She didn’t know.

What she _did_ know was that breaking into High Castle was the height of stupidity. Dragons might chose to walk on two legs, but they were hardly human. Unfortunately, she'd no actual choice in the matter.

Not with Enzo's life on the line.

In her pocket was a magical timer. It liked it unnecessary zap her every few hours to remind her that it was ticking down. Damon has worn such a delighted smile when he’d given it to her, the jerk. It was completely unnecessary, and it’d been years since she had been subject to anything similar. Usually guilds only used such things for new members or thieves who had failed too many missions to be trusted. Caroline and Enzo had been highly ranked guild members, and their price had reflected that.

Damon was sadistic and an ass. It was a terrible combination, and one day she’d make him eat his arrogance. As soon as she freed Enzo.

She just had to survive first. Determinedly, Caroline thought of all the ways she was going to make Enzo regret his lack of judgment as she inches across the wall. He’d let Damon Salvatore of all people get a drop on him.

And over something as insubstantial as a myth.

She had always thought Enzo’s dragon obsession was ridiculous, but it’d been a small flaw in what had otherwise been a reasonable person. Her best friend and business partner had an eye for a good deal. He was an excellent thief and she’d never once worried that he’d betray her. But she'd known the moment he walked in two years earlier, tossing a dragon scale from hand to hand, that something was different.

_"Oh, stop looking so put out, Gorgeous," Enzo said with a laugh as he set it on their table, sitting down with a thump. "These things are harmless." Caroline pursed her lips, staring at it with trepidation. "Nothing a dragon casts out into the world is harmless, Enzo. How did you even get that? Dragons are particular about their scales.”_

_Her friend shrugged. "This isn’t a real scale, not the way you’re thinking. No one really knows what they are, but there isn’t really any magic to them. They’re harmless. My mom had one for a bit, and it just sat around, a fascinating paper weight. Then one day, it disappeared." She stared at him dubiously. "It disappeared. I thought you said it didn’t have any magic? Someone probably hawked it. Why didn't_ you _hawk it?" "Can't sell 'em. A merchant with a fascination might give you a bolt of cloth or a pretty trinket, but no one gives them any real value because they don't stick around long. You can't collect them. Honestly, if they didn’t disappear on their own whim, no one would even think they’d once belonged to a dragon.”_

_Brows tucking together, she peered at the red heart of it. It seemed to flicker in the light, and she wondered if she touched it, if it would be warm. A tiny piece of something humans were fascinated and terrified by in equal turns. "Why'd you pick it up then?" "It's red. My last one was green." Enzo laughed at her annoyed noise and swiped it off the table. "Here, catch." Swearing as the flat, shimmering stone no bigger than her fist was tossed at her, she caught it before it could smack her in the face. Glaring as Enzo smirked at her, she yelped when it suddenly blazed in her hands. She dropped it back into the table, her palms and finger bones vibrating. For a moment, her skin seemed to glitter as if she plunged them into gold dust. Under her disbelieving gaze, the effect slowly faded, until she had to squint to see the lingering edges of it._

_Enzo had straightened, his face wiped clean of amusement. Shaking her hands over the table, she bit out her next sentence. "Is this some sort of joke? Because it's_ not _funny." Enzo shook his head, reaching for the stone, rolling it between his hands for a long moment. "No, I didn't arrange that." "Then what is this?" Troubled eyes met hers, and Enzo shook his head. "I don't know."_ Her hands sometimes still glimmered faintly in the direct sunlight of the noon sun. She'd taken to wearing gloves, but somehow, Damon Salvatore had discovered her secret.

And Damon wanted something badly from the dragons. And for some insane reason, he thought she could get it for him. And with Enzo’s life in the balance, she had no choice but to try.

And now she was clinging to the side of High Castle and hoping she didn't splatter like a bug.

Shivering at another gust of wind, which was _probably_ the downdraft of an unseen dragon, Caroline ignored her frozen toes and continued to inch along. All she had to do was get inside, steal a trinket, and get back out. She could do it. She’d stolen bigger, more dangerous things over the years, what was one more impossible mission?

The first, cold raindrop hit her nose and she tried to flatten even further against the wall. In another five feet she'd run out of ledge and either have to make a precarious drop or try to climb up to the battlements. Salvatore’s grasp of the defenses had been shy on the details, but Caroline imagined she’d probably find herself facing archers and more patrolling dragons.

Not the King. She shuddered. He wasn't supposed to be in the castle. He wasn’t even supposed to be in the country. She'd never have risked stealing from the tower if she'd known that the _King_ had returned from negotiations in the West. Niklaus, The Great Hoarder, Klaus to foe and friend alike, was known to take even the smallest of thefts in his castle personally. The debacle of a visiting ambassador getting a little light fingered with a scale or two a few decades ago was still talk of the mage circles.

And what Klaus had done with the ambassador had featured prominently in those stories. Unlike Enzo’s pretty mementos, dragons were very careful about letting scales, teeth or bones out into the wild. Smart thieves knew to avoid dragon hoards.

It’d only been dumb luck that she'd seen him and his entourage of guards before they’d seen her. There had been no mistaking the tumbled head of curls and the aura of impatient anger and power that followed him. She'd never seen him in person before, but many artists had taken great delight in recreating the stark lines of his face, his full lips. The hard angle of his jaw and slashed, angry tilt of his eyes.

But those sketches hadn’t prepared her for the impact of his face in person. The punch of it in her chest stole her breath. He’d ground to a halt in the middle of the corridor, gaze narrowed to burning slits of dragon magic, and her heart had leapt into her throat. For a single, terrible moment Caroline thought he’d sensed her presence.

But that was impossible.

She’d activated no alarm. She wore no magic on her skin. There was nothing about her small, human presence that should have tipped him off to anything. There were a number of the castle staff who were human, a handful of rotating ambassadors who made a point to stay in his presence and an endless rotation of merchants hoping to trade.

Caroline was just one human girl among the many.

But there had been no mistaking the tension in the hall, the heat of magic building as Klaus had all but glowed with a warning that had fisted in her chest. Just when she’d been terrified to so much as breathe, someone had called his name, words cutting through the air like a knife. She had taken the opportunity to all but flee out the nearest window.

And now she was stuck with no easy way down and a storm building violently above her head.

Shivering at another blast of cold air, Caroline pressed her hand flat against the wall and coaxed a little more distance out of her ledge. The longer she crept along the castle walls, the more it felt like a trap. What kind of trap, she didn’t know, but she didn’t want to find out. While every drop of magic used escalated the risk, it was still better than a fall to her death.

Five more steps to the right and she could reach a balcony. Maybe she could find a way to sneak out after that. Better to try again at stealing when the king had left than to rush and end up being turned into a Caroline-flambé.

As if her thoughts had summoned it, the quiet was broken by a clanging bell and Caroline's mouth ran dry. She didn't know the patterns that signified an alarm, but there was an urgency to the tolling that told her that whatever had happened in the castle, it was now on high alert. It was possible she wasn’t the only thief Salvatore had sent into the castle and she cursed at the thought.

Some idiot was going to get her killed.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she moved forward and tried to ignore the strain on her magic, cursing her luck. She needed to make it to the balcony and she needed to do it soon. Setting her teeth to stop them from chattering, she inched forward as quickly as she dared.

She was almost a foot from the prettily curving rail when the first fat raindrop splattered across her face. Hissing through clenched teeth, Caroline judged the distance as the rain started to fall in angry drops and then a deluge. The wind had changed too, harsh gusts mingling violently with the dragon backwinds to create wicked whips of water.

Praying to whatever gods might have been listening, she pressed her hands flat against the wall. She only had one way off the wall and her magic wouldn’t last forever. Heart hammering in her throat, Caroline leapt across the gap.

She landed on her stomach, the thick stone of the railing driving the air from her lungs as she reflexively clung to anything she could reach. Her boots banged painfully against her chest, the heavy laces abrading the back of her neck as they dangled over the balcony. Her bare, half-frozen toes scrambled to find purchase on the rough stone and she finally managed to awkwardly shove her weight forward, tumbling onto the stone floor with several shuddering gasps.

Not being dead hurt.

A sudden, violent peal of thunder had her rolling to her knees. Her ribs twinged, stomach aching, but she forced herself to get to her feet. Dying by lightning strike couldn’t hurt more but she’d made it this far, she needed to keep going. Shivering in earnest, she staggered towards the balcony doors.

Praying that they weren’t locked, her fingers closed along the handle as a roar sounded through the bones of the castle, rattling her teeth in a way that had nothing to do with the storm. Choking on her next inhale at the sudden wash of dragon magic so potent her lungs froze in her chest. Her eyes stung. She’d never known hunting magic so strong, and Caroline stumbled into the door she was holding onto. It opened beneath her weight and she fell gracelessly into a heap.

She didn’t have time to worry about her aching bones or if the room was occupied as the magic continued to bore down on the castle. Curling into a ball, she clumsily dug through the extra pocket she’d sewn into her pants for emergencies, fingers shaking. The feeling of being _hunted_ , of magic searching, only intensified and she curled her fingers around her emergency spell. It activated beneath her palm and the force of it nearly left her blind.

But it broke the terrible hold of the dragon magic.

Coughing as her lungs started to function again, Caroline heaved in several greedy gulps of air. A heartbeat, then two, and the roar that shook the castle this time left her whimpering low in her throat. The silence afterwards was loud and painful, and she lifted her head just long enough to confirm the room seemed to be unoccupied before awkwardly collapsing back onto the floor.

Pressing her face against what felt like a very nice rug, Caroline struggled to put her composure back together. The spell she’d just used bought her an hour or two, tops. A specialty of Enzo’s, one they’d taken great pains to hide, the _don’t-look-at-me_ spell would hide her from _any_ kind of hunting magic. Though it would do her little good if someone walked in on her gasping like a fish on the floor. She probably should have used it earlier and tried to escape with it, but it was a habit to use it only as a last resort. The ingredients were rare and expensive, and it took Enzo nearly a month to work the spell.

But whatever the dragons had unleashed…

Refusing to think about what might happen if they discovered her, Caroline forced herself to take several measured breaths. Once she was certain she wouldn’t hyperventilate, she slowly pushed herself into a sitting position to take stock of where she was and what her options where.

She almost immediately wished she hadn’t.

While the room was very faintly lit, from what she could see everything in it spoke of constrained opulence. The rugs beneath her, the impression of a giant bed, what looked like some couches in front of a fireplace. If she squinted, she could almost make out the shadowed walls and what might have been shelving.

And the smell. A mix of something a little like wood smoke and something like heat against stone mingled pleasantly. Caroline had never been close enough to a dragon to smell one before, but her stomach twisted in knots as she realized where she had landed.

She was in a dragon’s _bedroom_.

But what was even _worse_ was the realization that in the faint, barely discernible light, her hands were shimmering. Lips parting on a sharp inhale, she curled her fingers tightly into her palms and cursed. The gold dust was at the brightest she’d ever seen it outside that first afternoon, and shock left her reeling. Staring at her golden skin, she set her teeth and waited for the glow to fade.

But the shimmer of it, utterly beautiful and completely terrifying, seemed determined to stick around this time.

Biting her lip hard enough to sting, Caroline slapped at her pockets, searching frantically for the gloves she’d tucked away when she’d started climbing the walls. Right then, she was seriously regretting that her magic worked best if she could feel the stone with her bare hands. Had she somehow absorbed some of the magic in the walls? Whatever spell had marked her hadn’t been designated for thieves, because Enzo had come away without a mark. But she definitely wouldn’t be stealing anything tonight if her hands continue to shimmer.

Cursing when she realized her gloves were missing, she scrambled back to her feet and winced as her laces dug into tender skin. Her boots were soaked, so there was no point in putting them back on just then. Tugging them over her head, she tied the laces to her belt, situating her boots so they’d lay against her thighs.

Outside, the wind howled and she shivered reflexively. The room was balmy, protecting her from the worst of the cold, but she was soaked through. Unfortunately, she’d have to worry about her clothing once she found a way out of the room and a better place to hide. Squaring her shoulders, Caroline listened to the utter silence for several long moments before she picked a direction and tried to locate a door. Relief was heady as she immediately found one.

It’d probably be a closet or bathroom, but at least she’d eventually find a door out. There was no way a dragon was using the balcony as the only entry and exit to the top. She needed to get out of this bedroom before the dragon came back, and after that, the castle. And she needed to do it before the storm broke and dawn lit up the sky.

She’d just have to figure out another way to rescue Enzo. Stealing from the dragons tonight when the King was home was a really bad idea. Reaching for the door handle, she cursed when it rattled under her hand but didn’t budge. Locked.

Warily looking around the cavern of a room, Caroline forcibly told herself that the door probably led to some sort of secret stash and it made sense that it was locked. Refusing to panic, she crept along the wall until she found another door. And then another. And then back again to the first. But no matter what handle she picked, _none_ of them would budge. In the dull light of the room she couldn’t find so much as a keyhole to try to pick. And using any more magic inside the castle was a terrible idea. Maybe she could find something and take the hinges on the door apart…

But the doors seemed to be crafted out some sort of stone stone and there while there were seams, she couldn’t find a hinge. Just to be sure, Caroline crossed the room again and tried the balcony doors and found they’d sealed shut.

She was trapped.

Forcibly swallowing down her rising panic, Caroline decided the only thing she could do was wait. She had some time before Enzo’s spell wore off. Hopefully by then whatever hunting magic had been set loose would have dissipated. That would give her time to think as long as the owner of the bedroom stayed _gone_.

But first, she was going to need a hiding place.

Once she managed that, she could give herself a few moments to quietly freak out and then come up with another plan. Hopefully one that would work this time.

* * *

A loud banging noise jolted her awake. Eyes snapping open, Caroline was horrified to realize that she’d dozed off. The cozy warmth of the room and the strain of using so much magic had clearly worked against her. Outside the storm still beat against the castle with noisy abandonment, and her internal clock said she couldn’t have slept for more than an hour. Wiggling in the corner she’d jammed herself into, she winced as her limbs stiffly protested the motion. Squinting, Caroline tried to figure out where the noise that had woken her had come from.

She didn’t have to wait long.

One of the doors she’d been unable to budge had slammed open and overhead lights now flared into life illuminating a room that was definitely opulent and absolutely not restrained in showing it off. Shelves and tables gleamed with priceless treasures, silks and paintings decorated the walls, but it was the man who stalked through the door that caught and held her attention. She froze, muscles locking in place as she stared at the Dragon King pacing in constrained rage in his bedroom.

He paused in the middle of the room, hands curled into fists as he exhaled harshly. His head tipped back, every line of him vibrating with barely constrained power and shock left her mouth bone dry. She _couldn’t_ be in his room.

The King’s tower was nowhere near the part of the castle she’d been climbing. She’d hadn’t even come close to breaching the third level of the castle, much less the upper ramparts. _How had she ended up in his room?_ Panic jumbled her thoughts even as she automatically took stock of his appearance, looking for any kind of weakness.

He definitely wasn’t difficult to look at.

For a dragon, he wasn’t as tall as she would have expected, and the long lines of him were deceptively lean. His hair was a fascinating, riotous mess. His full mouth was set into a hard line and her eyes lingered without her permission somewhere around the length of his throat, teeth sinking harshly into her lip. If she hadn’t been so worried that he’d tear out her throat if he found her, she’d have found him gorgeous.

But then he moved and she realized the sheen on his shirt was blood. A lot of it. Pressing her hand firmly against her mouth, she nearly choked on her next breath as he pulled the ruined clothing over his head. Eyes wide, she stared at the hard planes of his abdomen and the smooth muscles along his chest, nails digging harshly into her thigh to keep from doing something stupid.

Like trying to touch him.

The inexplicable need of it was vibrating in her bones. She’d never heard of this particular reaction to dragon magic but maybe they just didn’t speak it outside proper mage circles. There was no good or sane reason for her to want to touch him so badly her hands trembled with need. Tucking her fingers firmly between her thighs, Caroline tried not to fidget as she waited him out.

Her pulse kicked in her chest when he muttered something pithy, the shift of his face so inexplicably lonely that she couldn’t help but wonder what could leave him with such an expression. Teeth scraping her lip, she froze when his brows sudden came together and he suddenly scanned the room with eyes gone pale gold with power. As if he sensed her. He perused the room slowly, something about her presence clearly nudged at his attention.

Caroline held her breath. _You can’t see me. You can’t see me._ The chat was repeated over and over, nails digging into her thigh. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, he moved towards a different door and pulled it open, disappearing inside. Very, very carefully, Caroline let out a shaky breath.

Fingers trembling with lingering adrenaline, she forced herself to inhale and exhale slowly, working to calm her racing heart. The soft hum of water moving against stone told her that he was cleaning up after what might have been a bout of torture. He’d definitely, probably, killed someone.

She didn’t have the time to worry about that just then. She needed to _think_. Looking around now that there were lights, she shifted carefully to stare at the wall that had once been a balcony. Now there were a series of tall, impossible windows that showed how heavily the rainfall lashed at the castle.

There was no way she’d hallucinated the balcony earlier, not when she’d fallen into it hard enough that her stomach muscles were bruised. That meant _magic_. Every Guild knew the rumors that High Castle was inescapable. Many a thief had disappeared in its walls, never to return. Most of her guild wrote off those disappearances as dragon paranoia and their magical defenses. Enzo, however, was from a different part of the world and had other theories. He came from a place further east and closer to dragon territory than she’d lived most of her life, and he spoke of dragon magic as if it were sentient.

It sucked that she was starting to think he was right. It sounded insane, but if the castle walls had _moved_ that made escaping a lot more complicated. In her pocket, the spell timer pulsed in warning.

Mentally promising herself that she was going to make Damon regret this idea, she forced herself to take even breaths. Glancing around the room again, her brain finally made the connection that if the dragon had walked through the door there was a chance it was still unlocked. Pushing to her feet with a wince as her bones creaked, Caroline warily glanced at the open bathroom door. She was a thief. A good one. She could make it across the room. She could even do it quietly.

Carefully, on whisper-soft feet, she inched her way across the open space. The carpet absorbed her footsteps, and there was no indication that the dragon sensed her presence. Sending a short prayer to whatever of her gods were listening, she crept closer to the door.

Five feet from the door, Enzo’s magic failed. The sound of it crackled around her, an egg shell breaking in half. The noise was a built in warning, and it should have only been heard by her. But she stood still for several heartbeats anyway, waiting to see if the dragon had been alerted to her presence now that she was no longer under magical cover. When silence held, heart hammering in her throat, she took a single, careful step.

A roar shook the room.

Bolting, Caroline made for the open door.

If she could get outside of this room she’d have a much better chance of escaping. She was half a foot away when it slammed shut in front of her. Twisting hard, she threw herself to the side as something blurred in her peripheral vision. The impression of heat, of something large and _angry_ , had her heart jolting into her throat. Scrambling for one of the windows, her mind frantically searching for, and then discarding plans as fast as she could think of them, she yelped when she was suddenly jerked backwards by her cloak.

Her teeth clacked together as she fell to the floor, breath forced painfully from her lungs as her boots slammed into her ribs and for a moment the world was a confusing tangle of cloth, pain and slick, fever warm skin. Scrambling for a foothold, a grip, an angle for a knee, Caroline used every dirty trick she could think of to throw the dragon off of her. Nothing she tried drew more than a grunt as she struggled blindly beneath him. Her cloak blocked her vision as she struggled, and twisted sharply, forehead smacking into what felt like a stone wall. The dragon cursed above her and she groaned in pain, temple throbbing as her cloak was yanked away from her face.

Caroline blinked the stars from her eyes, trying to make sense of the impression of tangled curls and damp, pale skin, the tight, angry line of his jaw. The dragon’s eyes were blue and ringed in gold, the stupidly gorgeous planes of his face and generous lips far too close to her face.

“A second thief. How unfortunate for you.” He growled, words bitten off as the weight of him pinned her to the floor. “How exactly did you find yourself in my room?”

She had not expected the sharp, biting edge of his accent and bit down sharply on the side of her tongue to keep from answering the snarled question. Nothing she could say here would be believed, and it was better to say nothing and escape later than accidentally give something important away, like her name. His lips curled, teeth white in the low light, and her stomach jumped.

“It takes a talented thief indeed to make it this far into my castle, human, but I’m not feeling particularly forgiving tonight. _Tell_ me who sent you.” His head tipped, eyes glittering. “Unless you’d prefer the same treatment as your companion?”

Rage and frustration knotted in her chest. So Damon has been enough of a fool to send in another thief and it was going to cost her. Her chances of slipping in and out of the castle unnoticed had been ruined before she’d even begun. Temper mader her reckless, and she bared her teeth as the air heated with magic.

“No.”

“No?” His lashes narrowed, blue fading rapidly into pale gold. “Clever then, but not particularly bright. You’ll live longer, if you answer my questions.”

This time Caroline managed to stubbornly hold her tongue. It was the height of stupidity to match wills against the dragon king, naked or not, particularly with his temper written clearly across his face, but the fear she should have felt wouldn’t come. The angry, rumbling noise he made in his chest startled her more than terrified, and he sat up and stood with a smooth motion of slick muscle that was far more distracting that it should have been. Her eyes jerked up to his face and her cheeks flamed as she tried not to stare at the eyeful he seemed so unconcerned with offering.

“Well,” his smile was bladed, the dimples dangerous. “Let’s see if some time in the dungeons will loosen your tongue, hmm? Your friend is proving to be quite… resilient. We shall have to see if you are just as stubborn.”

Caroline yelped embarrassingly when he fisted his hand in her shift and yanked her off the floor. Her hands scrambled against his on reflex as he shifted his weight to drag her out of the room, she cursed he came to a halt and her momentum left her crashing into the full length of him. Jerking back, she glared and dug her nails into his skin. Any curses she might have tossed at him died as her eyes returned to his face, and her stomach flipped when she realized his gaze was locked on her hands and the shimmer of magic across her fingers.

For a moment her heart lodged in her throat and it was impossible to breathe. Dragging in air, she dug her nails in harder. “You..”

The sound of her voice brought his gaze back to hers with an intensity that froze her tongue. The gold of his dragon had fully bled into his eyes, and the sudden influx of magic in the room was warm and rough, but so welcoming her heart pounded loudly in her ears. The hold on her shirt eased, and for a long moment they stared at each other, something wonderful and terrible hovering between them. His lips parted, a flash of wild and coveting _want_ flickering through his eyes, when the spelled alarm on her hip buzzed in warning.

Enzo.

His gaze narrowed, eyes dropping to her hip. “What…”

Caroline didn’t give him a chance to ask the question, taking advantage of his loosened hold on her to grip his wrist tightly and yank him off balance. He swore, but without her cloak to trap her, she was able to use his surprise against him and take out his legs. She barely managed to dodge his attempt to grab her as he went down, lunging past him towards the door. Desperation gave her speed, and testing the door one more time, to her shock it sprung open beneath her hands. Acting on instinct borne from a thousand heists, she grabbed what remained of her magic and slammed the stone door behind her.

She couldn’t open doors like this easily, but she could _lock_ them. Slapping her hand into the stone, Caroline shoved all the magic she had left into it, yanking the stone wall into the door to act as a crude lock. The full weight of the dragon she’d barely escaped slammed into it, and the lock cracked. It wouldn’t hold it long. But she didn’t need long. Spinning on her heel, Caroline headed for her stairs, and took them at top speed.

Behind her, the Dragon King roared and the castle shook with the force of it. In the distance, she could hear the clang of alarm bells but she didn’t slow. At her hip, the alarm stung in warning before going silent.

Damon was an ass and she was going to make him regret his extremely stupid life choices. To do that, she needed get out of the castle before the guards decided to torture her. But first, she needed to steal something.

And to that, she needed to take a small detour.

Above her, the sounds of a door being smashed wide open echoed through the stairwell. Sliding through an opening door, she glanced down the hallway and took off running in the first open direction she found. Before she could steal, she needed to put some distance between her and the rampaging dragon behind her.

Enzo was going to owe her _so_ big.


End file.
